Gisel Guzman Echavarria

Gisel Guzman is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the School of Sustainability and the Rob Walton College of Global Futures at Arizona State University (ASU). She earned her PhD in Geography from the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (SGSUP) at ASU and holds an M.Sc. in Water Resources Engineering and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Her research examines the relationship between heat exposure and human health, with a focus on thermal stress, physiological strain, and adaptation across diverse social, economic, and cultural contexts. She conducts interdisciplinary research integrating observational data, field studies, and modeling approaches, particularly human heat balance models, to better understand person-environment interactions in a warming climate. She plays a key role in developing the ASU/USYD HEAT-Lim (Human/Environmental Adaptation and Threshold Limits) model, which produces physiology-based estimates of human survivability and liveability under extreme heat in a changing climate. As a postdoctoral researcher, she contributes to the NSF-funded R2I2: "Cultivating School Heat Readiness in the Southwest" project, and her work contributes to estimating children’s total heat burden and determining maximum safe activity levels during outdoor play.

Her research interests span urban climatology, biometeorology, environmental health, thermal physiology, extreme heat, and building science. Her doctoral research addressed conceptual and methodological challenges in non-invasive measures of personal heat exposure, stress, and strain, including the use of wearable sensors. She led fieldwork efforts in Phoenix (United States) and Medellin and Cali (Colombia) during her doctoral research. Before joining ASU, she worked at the Early Warning System of Medellín and the Aburrá Valley (SIATA), where she conducted research on urban climatology, remote sensing, and extreme weather risk management. Her master’s research examined intra-urban climate variability in Medellín as a function of urban design.

Guzman’s honors include the 2026 ASU Faculty Women’s Association Distinguished Graduate Student Award, the 2025 SGSUP Melvin Marcus Memorial Fellowship, the 2024 SGSUP Matthew G. Bailey Scholarship Award, and the 2023 SGSUP Anthony J. Brazel Research Award.